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(Jason DeCrow/dapd via AP) Occupy Wall Street protests in New York's Financial District in September 2012 The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic By Ganesh Sitaraman Knopf This article appears in the Summer 2017 issue of The American Prospect . Subscribe here . “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” —Plutarch (c. 46–120 ce) “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” —Louis D. Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court justice (1856–1941) T here ought to be a German word for the unpleasant feeling that comes when one’s dire predictions come true. Schmerz-Prognose : pain in premonition. Something like that feeling likely overcame Vanderbilt law professor Ganesh Sitaraman at around 10 p.m. on November 8, 2016, when a demagogue with kleptocratic tendencies won the White House. Sitaraman essentially predicted...